Discussion of current legal issues

In his latest attempt to pander to basest of our human instincts, Trump is now saying the death penalty should be used for drug dealers. Putting aside for the moment the thought that this is a ploy by Trump for the public not to focus on Trump’s traitorous contacts with Russia, should we give in to our animal instincts and demand the death penalty for drug dealers?

Homicides resulting from drug usage are at an all time high. There is almost universal agreement that the drug problem has infected our society in an unprecedented fashion. With the escalating illegal drug industry making the headlines daily, public concern for the rights of innocent victims and law enforcement personnel has intensified. The simple Trump argument is that the death penalty works because the death penalty protects society from the one put to death because that individual will never commit another crime. Cf., Terrebonne v. Butler, 820 F.2d 156, 157-158 (5th Cir. 1988) (drug dealers are blights on life which like vampires.).

However, “[c]riminologically, the existence and use of the death penalty may not even create the deterrent effect on potential offenders that lawmakers hoped when enacting such laws." Roeder, L. Eisen, and J. Bowling, "What Caused the Crime Decline?," Brennan Center for Justice, February 12, 2015. The authors noted criminals do not consider the consequences of their actions, particularly when the consequence is rarely applied, as in the case of the death penalty. "Much psychological and sociological research suggests that many criminal acts are crimes of passion or committed in a heated moment based only on immediate circumstances, and thus potential offenders may not consider or weigh longer-term possibilities of punishment and capture, including the possibility of capital punishment." They concluded, "In line with the past research, the Brennan Center’s empirical analysis finds that there is no evidence that executions had an effect on crime in the 1990s or 2000s." Ultimately, they attributed drop in crime to various social changes and policing tactics, with increased incarceration having no effect in the 2000s and only minimal effect on property crime in the 1990s.

But studies have demonstrated that homicide rates do not vary greatly between states that have a death penalty and those that do not. In addition, the homicide rates do not vary before and after the imposition of capital legislation in any given jurisdiction. For a review of the literature on deterrence, see FRANKLIN E. ZIMRING & GORDON HAWKINS, CAPITAL PUNISHMENT AND THE AMERICAN AGENDA 167-186 (1986).

In fact, states without the death penalty have had consistently lower murder rates

The New York Times did an analysis and found that states without the death penalty have lower homicide rates than states with the death penalty. During the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48% - 101% higher than in states without the death penalty. Michigan became the first English-speaking territory in the world to abolish capital punishment in 1847. "I think Michigan made a wise decision 150 years ago," said the state's governor, John Engler, a Republican, referring to the state's abolition of the death penalty in 1847. "We're pretty proud of the fact that we don't have the death penalty." During a lengthy House debate regarding a bill to allow the death penalty in Michigan, Representative Jack Minor (D-Flint) told his colleagues that studies show crime rates are lower in states without the death penalty. He noted, "The death penalty's not a deterrent. In fact, the figures would suggest it's just the opposite." Other opponents of the measure stated that "revenge" would not help victims' families.

There are studies which suggest that there is a deterrent effect on homicides due to the death penalty. However, based on a review of more than three decades of research, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine concluded that studies claiming a deterrent effect on murder rates from the death penalty are fundamentally flawed. The report concluded: “The committee concludes that research to date on the effect of capital punishment on homicide is not informative about whether capital punishment decreases, increases, or has no effect on homicide rates. Therefore, the committee recommends that these studies not be used to inform deliberations requiring judgments about the effect of the death penalty on homicide. Consequently, claims that research demonstrates that capital punishment decreases or increases the homicide rate by a specified amount or has no effect on the homicide rate should not influence policy judgments about capital punishment." (emphasis added). Criminologist Daniel Nagin of Carnegie Mellon, who chaired the panel of experts, said, “We recognize this conclusion will be controversial to some, but nobody is well served by unfounded claims about the death penalty. Nothing is known about how potential murderers actually perceive their risk of punishment." The report found three fundamental flaws with existing studies on deterrence:

The studies do not factor in the effects of noncapital punishments that may also be imposed.

The studies use incomplete or implausible models of potential murderers’ perceptions of and response to the use of capital punishment.

Estimates of the effect of capital punishment are based on statistical models that make assumptions that are not credible.

Not only is the death penalty does the death penalty not deter crime, is administered unequally based on race and innocent people are sentenced to death:

So lets forget about the death penalty for drug dealers and focus on how Russia denied U.S. citizens the right to vote.

Drugs are illegal because drugs harm people. A dubious conclusion given that in 1994, John Ehrlichman, the Watergate co-conspirator and President Nixon’s domestic-policy adviser, explained the reason why the federal government started the war on drugs:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

But lets assume things should be illegal if they harm people.

According to a study published in 2010 by "Society of Teachers of Family Medicine," or STFM, found that the average total cost for the healthy-food-diet model was $5,019 per year. The average cost of the convenient-food-diet model was more than twice that of the healthy-food-model, at $10,298 per year. The average daily cost of the healthy diet was $7.48, while the fast food diet averaged $15.30 per day. The study found that while food costs represented a significant portion of annual income, diets based primarily on convenient food sources, such as fast food, were more expensive than well-planned diets with foods acquired from supermarket chains. In conclusion, the STFM report found that “[d]iets based heavily on foods from convenient sources are less healthy and more expensive than a well-planned menu from budget foods available from large supermarket chains.”

In another study, rats were fed a standard junk food diet, complete with cookies, cakes, biscuits, and other junk foods for two weeks. Another group of rats were fed a ‘standard lab chow’ diet. They were then observed under Pavlovian conditions, when a sound cue informed the rats it was time for their next serving. You can guess what happened. The ‘junk-food rats’ ate until they were glutinously full, obese, and ill, and the ‘healthy –diet rats’ stopped eating naturally – when they were full, and not over-stuffed. Dr. Amy Reichelt, the lead author explains that “As the global obesity epidemic intensifies, advertisements may have a greater effect on people who are overweight and make snacks like chocolate bars harder to resist.” Professor Margaret Morris, another author of the study adds “It’s like you’ve just had ice cream for lunch, yet you still go and eat more when you hear the ice cream van come by.”

Junk food is addicitive. Junk food floods the brain with the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine, affecting the regions that govern pleasure and self-control. Over time, the function and structure of the brain change and dopamine receptors are reduced, making drugs, food and other substances less enjoyable but still desperately desired.

Clearly, fast food is addictive in same way as drugs, say scientists. John Hoebel, a psychologist at Princeton University, and colleagues showed that rats fed a diet containing 25 per cent sugar developed withdrawal symptoms when the sugar was removed, including chattering teeth and shivering. When the rats were given a dose of naloxone, a drug that blocks opioid receptors, the researchers noted a drop in dopamine levels in the nucleus accumbens, a cluster of cells in the mid-brain linked with feelings of reward. Writing in Obesity Research, he says this is the same pattern of neurochemical activity seen in heroin addicts going through withdrawal. "Drugs give a bigger effect, but it's essentially the same process," he said. Other scientists, including Ann Kelley, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin medical school, have observed similar changes in brain chemistry.

It is no wonder we are facing a global obesity epidemic. The United States is the epicenter of this troubling phenomenon, with 2 our of 3 Americans being clinically overweight or obese. If we check the numbers against the Historical Atlas of the 20th Century, 203 million people died in the last century from war and oppression – including military and collateral civilian casualties from conflicts, genocide, politicide (i.e., the extermination of people who share a political belief), mass murders, and famines. This equates to an average of 2. million deaths a year – but the junk food habit kills more. The World Health Organization has found that at least 2.8 million people die annually from diseases linked to obesity including heart disease, diabetes, and brain stroke.In other words, eating fast food is addictive. Eating fast food kills 40 percent more people than wars, famine, dictators, murderers, and politicians put together. But burgers, fries and deep fried chicken or tacos are not illegal. No one goes to jail for dealing burgers and fries.

"The Constitution does not trust judges to make determinations of criminal guilt."Neder v. United States, 527 U.S. 1, 32 (1999) (Scalia, J., dissenting).

“The right to have a jury make the ultimate determination of guilt has an impressive pedigree . . . This right was designed to guard against a spirit of oppression and tyranny on the part of rulers, and was from very early times insisted on by our ancestors in the parent country, as the great bulwark of their civil and political liberties.” United States v. Gaudin, 515 U.S. 506, 510-11(1995)

The law a jury in a criminal case has the power to acquit even when its findings as to the facts, if literally applied to the law as stated by the judge, would have resulted in a conviction. This is known as jury nullification. This jury power jury nullification, has solid historical credentials; the “pages of history shine on instances of the jury’s exercise of its prerogative to disregard uncontradicted evidence and instructions of the judge.”United States v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113, 1130 (D.C.Cir.1972). For more than 300 years, jurors have had the power to nullify, that is, “to disregard the court's instructions and the evidence presented and return a verdict of acquittal” where the law and the evidence dictate otherwise. People v. Baca 48 Cal.App.4th 1703, 1707 (1996), citing Bushell's Case, 124 Eng.Rep. 1006 (1670). In Bushell's Case the jurors refused to follow the judge's instructions on the law, and it was thereafter ruled that these jurors could not be penalized for having followed their consciences in returning the verdict of acquittal.

The use of the general verdict and the bar against double jeopardy prevent any meaningful challenge to the exercise of this power. United States v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d at 1130–1132; U.S. v. Thomas, 116 F.3d 606, 615–616 (2d Cir.1997). But courts since Sparf v. United States, 156 U.S. 51, 101 (1895), have refused to tell juries of that power. Legally, there exists the “undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by the judge and contrary to the evidence. If the jury feels that the law… is unjust…for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the court must abide by that decision.” U.S. v Moylan, 417 F.2d 1002, 1006 (1969). But courts have decided to keep jury’s ignorant of that power.

I cannot help but hear Kafka’s words in The Trial: “It's characteristic of this judicial system that a man is condemned not only when he's innocent but also in ignorance.”

The right to a jury trial is a fundamental check on “arbitrary methods of prosecuting pretended offenses, and arbitrary punishments upon arbitrary convictions.” THE FEDERALIST, No. 83 at 499 (A. Hamilton)(Mentor Books 1961). Constitutionally speaking, a trial by jury represents the “very palladium of free government.” Id. The Federalist, said Thomas Jefferson, gives the “genuine meaning” of the Constitution. THE FEDERALIST, supra. at vii. In Duncan v. Louisiana, 391 U.S. 145, 155-56(1968) the United States Supreme Court emphasized that the primary purpose of a jury is to act as an “inestimable safeguard” against a “biased or eccentric judge.” Tocqueville called the jury a "free school..,in which each juror learns his rights," and he wrote that "juries teach men equity in practice." Alexis de Tocqueville, 1 Democracy in America 284-85 (Knopf, 1945).

The Framers' enthusiastic support for the jury stemmed in large measure from the role that juries had played in resisting English authority before the Revolution. The best example of this was the jury trial of John Peter Zenger, a New York printer whose trial on charges of seditious libel occurred forty-one years before the drafting of the Declaration of Independence." John Peter Zenger was a German American printer and who printed The New York Weekly Journal. He was accused of libel in 1734 by William Cosby, the governor of New York, but ignoring the instructions of the Governor's hand-picked judges and returned a verdict of "Not Guilty" on the charge of publishing "seditious libels." A Brief Narrative of the Case and Trial of John Peter Zenger, Printer of the New York Weekly Journal and The Tryal of John Peter Zenger. Zenger's lawyers, Andrew Hamilton and William Smith, Sr., successfully argued that truth is a defense against charges of libel.

The problem with that defense was it was not supported by the law: The greater the truth, the greater the libel. William Hawkins, 1 A Treatise of the Pleas of the Crown 194 (Garland, 1978)(reprint of the 1716 original) ("[I]t is far from being a Justification of a Libel, that the Contents thereof are true ... since the greater Appearance there is of Truth in any malicious Invective, so much the more provoking it is."). Therefore, under the law, Zenger’s attorneys should not have been able to argue to the jury about the truth of what their client published. As Chief Justice Delancey stated, "The law is clear that you cannot justify a libel ….The jury may find that Zenger printed and published those papers, and leave to the Court to judge whether they are libelous."

In response to Delancey's ruling, Hamilton revealed the true nature of the defense strategy--jury nullification:It is natural, it is a privilege, I will go farther, it is a right, which all free men claim, that they are entitled to complain when they are hurt. They have a right publicly to remonstrate against the abuses of power in the strongest terms, to put their neighbors upon their guard against the craft or open violence of men in authority, and to assert with courage the sense they have of the blessings of liberty, the value they put upon it, and their resolution at all hazards to preserve it as one of the greatest blessings heaven can bestow....

The loss of liberty, to a generous mind, is worse than death. And yet we know that there have been those in all ages who for the sake of preferment, or some imaginary honor, have freely lent a helping hand to oppress, nay to destroy, their country.... This is what every man who values freedom ought to consider. He should act by judgment and not by affection or self-interest; for where those prevail, no ties of either country or kindred are regarded; as upon the other hand, the man who loves his country prefers its liberty to all other considerations, well knowing that without liberty life is a misery....

Power may justly be compared to a great river. While kept within its due bounds it is both beautiful and useful. But when it overflows its banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemmed; it bears down all before it, and brings destruction and desolation wherever it comes. If, then, this is the nature of power, let us at least do our duty, and like wise men who value freedom use our utmost care to support liberty, the only bulwark against lawless power, which in all ages has sacrificed to its wild lust and boundless ambition the blood of the best men that ever lived....

I hope to be pardoned, Sir, for my zeal upon this occasion....While we pay all due obedience to men in authority we ought at the same time to be upon our guard against power wherever we apprehend that it may affect ourselves or our fellow subjects....

You see that I labor under the weight of many years, and am bowed down with great infirmities of body. Yet, old and weak as I am, I should think it my duty, if required, to go to the utmost part of the land where my services could be of any use in assisting to quench the flame of prosecutions upon informations, set on foot by the government to deprive a people of the right of remonstrating and complaining, too, of the arbitrary attempts of men in power....

But to conclude: The question before the Court and you, Gentlemen of the jury, is not of small or private concern. It is not the cause of one poor printer, nor of New York alone, which you are now trying. No! It may in its consequence affect every free man that lives under a British government on the main of America. It is the best cause. It is the cause of liberty. And I make no doubt but your upright conduct this day will not only entitle you to the love and esteem of your fellow citizens, but every man who prefers freedom to a life of slavery will bless and honor you as men who have baffled the attempt of tyranny, and by an impartial and uncorrupt verdict have laid a noble foundation for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbors, that to which nature and the laws of our country have given us a right to liberty of both exposing and opposing arbitrary power (in these parts of the world at least) by speaking and writing truth.

Chief Justice Delancey seemed unsure how to react to Hamilton's eloquence. He instructed the jury that its duty under the law was clear. There were no facts for it to decide, and it was not to judge the law. Delancey all but ordered the jury to return a verdict of "Guilty":

The great pains Mr. Hamilton has taken to show how little regard juries are to pay to the opinion of judges, and his insisting so much upon the conduct of some judges in trials of this kind, is done no doubt with a design that you should take but very little notice of what I might say upon this occasion. I shall therefore only observe to you that as the facts or words in the information are confessed, the only thing that can come in question before you is whether the words as set forth in the information make a libel. And that is a matter of law, no doubt, and which you may leave to the Court.

The jury withdrew to deliberate. A short time later, it returned. The clerk of the court asked the jury foreman, Thomas Hunt, to state the verdict of the jury. "Not guilty," Hunt answered. There followed "three huzzas" and "shouts of joy" from the crowd of spectators in the courtroom. Chief Justice Delancey demanded order, but no one listened forcing the judge to leave his courtroom.

Zenger’s trial was not unusual. England responded to these decisions by American juries by allowing Americans to be transported to England for trial. Edmund Burke protested this conduct by England since it would effectively deprive American defendants of their right to jury trial. Edmund Burke, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, in 2 The Works of The Right Honorable Edmund Burke. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence listed as a grievance against George III his "depriving us... of the benefits of trial by jury." Fifteen years later, the Sixth Amendment promised the people of the United States what they already had been promised by the Constitution of 1787 and by their states-that in all criminal prosecutions they would enjoy the right to jury trial. A half-century after the Zenger trial, as members of the First Congress debated the proposed Bill of Rights, one of the Constitution's principal drafters and great-grandson of Lewis Morris, Gouvernor Morris, would write of the Zenger case: "The trial of Zenger in 1735 was the germ of American freedom, the morning star of that liberty which subsequently revolutionized America."

This history was suggested by Supreme Court Justice Byron White in Duncan v. Louisiana when he wrote:A right to jury trial is granted to criminal defendants in order to prevent oppression by the Government. Those who wrote our constitutions knew from history and experience that it was necessary to protect against unfounded criminal charges brought to eliminate enemies and against judges too responsive to them voice of higher authority. The framers of the constitutions strove to create an independent judiciary but insisted upon further protection against arbitrary action. Providing an accused with the right to be tried by a jury of his peers gave him an inestimable safeguard against the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge. If the defendant preferred the common-sense judgment of a jury to the more tutored but perhaps less sympathetic reaction of the single judge, he was to have it. Beyond this, the jury trial provisions in the Federal and State Constitutions reflect a fundamental decision about the exercise of official power—a reluctance to entrust plenary powers over the life and liberty of the citizen to one judge or to a group of judges. Fear of unchecked power, so typical of our State and Federal Governments in other respects, found expression in the criminal law in this insistence upon community participation in the determination of guilt or innocence. 391 U.S. 145, 156 (1968).

Given that an important jury function is to bar arbitrary methods of prosecuting pretended offenses, and arbitrary punishments upon arbitrary convictions, that one of the reason’s America was founded was because of governmental interference with the power of a jury, one would think courts would empower juries with all the powers to protect against “the corrupt or overzealous prosecutor and against the compliant, biased, or eccentric judge.”

However, you would be wrong. Recall the jury in Zenger’s trial for seditious libel refused to return a guilty verdict despite indisputable evidence that Zenger violated the law as it was written. The jury did this because it felt Zenger had a right to publish a newspaper and, as a jury, it would not hold him criminally responsible for doing so.

As Justice White wrote in Duncan v. Louisiana, the jury in a criminal trial serves as the conscience of the community. Rather than the government having the final say regarding whether a person has violated a criminal law, it is the jury, made up of typical citizens, that has the job of finding a defendant guilty of a criminal act. “If the defendant preferred the common-sense judgment of a jury to the more tutored but perhaps less sympathetic reaction of the single judge, he was to have it”. The use of ordinary people, who rather than strictly applying the law as provided may allow sympathy and common sense to enter into their deliberations and verdict, is a foundation of the jury system. It has also caused problems for the courts in the form of jury nullification. It means the power of a jury to not follow the law. American courts refuse to tell juries that they have this power despite it being a part of our American heritage.

The legendary Jack Weinstein contends that relevance should be loosely construed to permit development of a jury nullification defense:

The judge may, and sometimes should, exercise some leniency in defining relevance which might allow a jury to consider nullification sensibly. Jurors will then have the information and freedom necessary to ignore the judge's instructions to follow the law if the jurors think the law as applicable to the case before them is unjust… . Addressing the jury or judge is the best chance a defendant may have to obtain publicity for his or her views. Arguably, the opportunity verges on a First Amendment right. A less stringent relevancy definition than the rigid and logical one in Rules 401, 402, and 403 of the Federal Rules of Evidence is justified in such cases. Jack B. Weinstein, Considering Jury "Nullification": When May and Should a Jury Reject the Law to Do Justice, 30 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 251 (1993). Emphasis added.

The criminal may go free, not because the constable has blundered, but because [law enforcement has] abused criminal process in a way the average citizen may find unacceptable. This practical aspect of trial by jury cannot be ignored.The court is reluctant in a criminal case to substitute its judgment for a defendant's on the question of whether such evidence is "necessary or critical" to a defense. It is sufficient that a compelling argument of cogency can be made. Id.

Only one or two states recognize that trial judges have the discretion to inform a jury of the power to nullify. See, e.g., State v. Mayo, 125 N.H. 200, 480 A.2d 85, 87 (1984). In all other states, however, judges determine the law in the jury instructions and the jury is bound by the instructions to follow the law.